We have received apologies from Senator Brady. Deputy Martin Daly is substituting for Deputy Peter 'Chap' Cleere.

I want to go through the note on privilege with the witnesses. Witnesses giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the evidence they give to a committee. This means that a witness has a full defence in any defamation action for anything said at a committee meeting. However, witnesses are expected not to abuse this privilege and may be directed to cease giving evidence on an issue at the Chair's direction. Witnesses should follow the direction of the Chair in this regard and are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that, as is reasonable, no adverse commentary should be made against an identifiable third person or entity. Witnesses who are to give evidence from a location outside the parliamentary precincts are asked to note that they may not benefit from the same level of immunity from legal proceedings as witnesses giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts and may consider it appropriate to take legal advice on the matter. Privilege against defamation does not apply to the publication by witnesses outside of the proceedings held by the committee of matters arising from the proceedings.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against either a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

Parliamentary privilege is considered to apply to the utterances of members participating online in a committee meeting when their participation is from within the parliamentary precincts. Members may not participate online in a public meeting from outside the parliamentary precincts, and any attempt to do so will result in the member having their online access removed.

The witnesses are all very welcome. Tá fáilte romhaibh anseo. The agenda for today's meeting is hemp production. We have a range of witnesses. The committee will hear from Mr. Cian O'Reilly, research, development and innovation, Technological University of the Shannon: Midlands Midwest; from Connacht Fibre, Mr. Eugene Morgan, director, and Mr. Raymond Reilly, director; from Munster Technological University, Mr. Stephen Barry-Hannon, senior researcher; from Future Cast, Mr. J.J. O'Hara, CEO, and Mr. Jason McTiernan, research and development; from Hemp Block International, Mr. Glen Donoghue, managing director; from Hempbuild Sustainable Products Limited, Mr. Ronan McDermott, director; from Technological University Dublin, Mr. Patrick Daly, lecturer-researcher; from University College Dublin, Dr. Rainer Melzer, associate professor, and Professor Oliver Kinnane, head of the school of architecture, planning and environmental policy; and, from Teagasc, Mr. Barry Caslin, energy and rural development specialist.

We have six opening statements from the witnesses. They will have five minutes each to go through them. Then we will have an opportunity to go to questions and answers with the members. We will start with Mr. Cian O'Reilly, Technological University of the Shannon.

I thank the Cathaoirleach and committee members for the opportunity to contribute to this discussion on industrial hemp in Ireland. My name is Cian O'Reilly. I currently work with Technological University of the Shannon in the area of bioeconomy research. However, my interest in hemp did not begin as an academic or policy exercise; it began during my previous role in customs and excise, where I served in a special operations unit at Dublin Airport. In that role I worked in an enforcement environment dealing with controlled goods, drug-related matters, money laundering risk and practical application of legislation at the border. For approximately two years, I encountered issues relating to hemp regulation on a regular basis.

I have signed the secrets Act, so I cannot discuss operational details, cases, figures or internal enforcement matters but what I can say clearly is that ambiguity around hemp creates real difficulty. It affects farmers, researchers, businesses, processors, end users and enforcement bodies.

Clear enforcement depends on clear law. That is why we are not here today to argue for looser regulation. We are here to argue for clearer regulation. I want to acknowledge everyone in the room here today. We have come together as a team. We have all worked on hemp, bio-based materials, farming, construction and plant science for years. We have all shown real commitment and passion for the value this crop could bring to rural Ireland, the built environment, the bioeconomy and the wider bio-based materials sector. The evidence of everyone in the room today matters because it is not a one-person issue and it is not a single-sector issue. It is a systems issue.

Our purpose today is to discuss industrial hemp not as an illicit drug, but as an opportunity: a low-THC agricultural crop grown for fibre and hurd, with potential uses in construction materials, insulation, textiles and other bio-based products. The distinction is important. Industrial hemp is not illicit cannabis. At EU level, hemp grown under the Common Agricultural Policy must use certified seed from approved varieties and remain below the 0.3% THC threshold. The European Commission states that hemp complying with CAP provisions is not used to produce narcotic drugs.

Europe is already moving. EU fibre cultivation increased by around 60% between 2015 and 2022, and production increased by more than 80%. France now accounts for over 60% of EU hemp production, followed by Germany and the Netherlands. The Commission also identifies hempcrete, hemp wool and fibreboard insulation as recognised construction applications. The committee will see we have some samples with us. Ireland should not be left behind. Today of all days, I feel that we should be aligning with Europe. This matters because we face many challenges in rural diversification, farm incomes, construction emissions and climate delivery. The EPA has projected that Ireland is on course for up to a 23% reduction in emissions by 2030 against a national target of 51%. We are not saying hemp is a silver bullet, and it will not solve that gap on its own. We should not overclaim it but it can form part of a practical response, especially where agriculture connects with low-carbon construction and regional processing.

The key point is that a hemp sector will not be created by licensing farmers alone. It requires genetics, agronomy, processing infrastructure, construction standards, end users, enforcement clarity and market confidence. Ireland does not need to invent a system from scratch. The EU framework already provides a controlled model based on certified seeds, approved varieties, THC verification, geospatial declarations and import controls. If there are concerns around enforcement, Ireland can refer to that framework and adapt it properly.

We are asking a number of things today, which we will discuss during the questions and answers. We are looking for Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine oversight of industrial hemp fibre pathways. Ireland should create a clear agricultural pathway for industrial hemp grown solely for fibre and hurd or shiv. This could operate as a Department-led single-window system for cultivation and area declaration, seed verification, inspection co-ordination and farm guidance, while health and justice retain appropriate roles in controlled drug policy and enforcement. We also ask for Ireland to align with the EU 0.3% THC framework. The Irish cultivation guidance and licensing practice should be aligned with this framework for certified industrial hemp varieties grown for fibre and hurd. This would reduce uncertainty, support consistency with CAP practice and make Ireland more attractive for legitimate fibre sector development. We also ask for regional processing pilots linked to off-take, linking in with the Industrial Development Authority and Enterprise Ireland. The fibre sector will not develop without drying facilities, storage, decortication, grading and product development. Ireland should support one or more regional pilot hubs linked to farmer contracts and construction material off-take. This should be tested before encouraging more widespread farmer uptake. We will discuss more asks throughout this.

Witnesses will see from the clock that the Dáil is sitting, so members will likely be in and out to take part in the Dáil. There will be a certain amount of movement back and forth.

I thank the committee for the opportunity to address it and to make the case for industrial hemp as a practical crop for Irish farmers and a building block for a domestic fibre-processing industry. I am a farmer and businessman from Glenamaddy, County Galway. I am here on behalf of Connacht Fibre Limited, a company established by me and Raymond Reilly to process industrial hemp in the west of Ireland and to create a route to market for Irish growers. Three years ago, Raymond and I began looking seriously at industrial hemp fibre as an agricultural crop. We developed a model similar in principle to the former sugar beet factory industry, where farmers grew a contracted crop, had a clear buyer and fed into a wider processing sector that supported rural employment.

Our aim is to contract farmers to grow and supply hemp straw. That straw would be processed into hurd and fibre for use in construction, textiles, animal bedding, insulation, composites, geotextiles and other industries. The opportunity begins on the farm, but the value is created across the full rural supply chain. For farmers, the economics are strong. At a yield of 4 tonnes per acre, we estimate the crop can return a profit of around €350 per acre, subject to final contract terms, quality and compliance. A contracted model gives farmers certainty before they sow. It means they are not being asked to grow a new crop and then search for a market afterwards.

The crop also fits well with the needs of Irish agriculture. It is relatively easy to grow under suitable conditions. It does not require top-quality land. Once established, it grows quickly, covers the ground and reduces the need for pesticides and herbicides. It has a deep root system, supports soil structure and helps increase organic matter and carbon in the soil. Hemp also strengthens crop rotation. It gives tillage farmers another break crop, helps move away from continuous cereal production and gives farmers a chance to establish a cover crop after harvest. That matters for soil health, nutrient retention and long-term resilience.

There is also a clear environmental and circular economy case. Industrial hemp is a non-food crop. That means it can provide a controlled land-bank for the safe and regulated use of digestate from anaerobic digestion systems,and for certain treated organic residues, where they meet all environmental, agricultural and traceability requirements. This turns a waste-management challenge into a productive agricultural and bioeconomy opportunity.

On carbon, the figures are significant. Available estimates indicate that hemp sequesters more than 4 tonnes of carbon dioxide per acre per crop, depending on yield, variety, soil and measurement method. If Ireland returned to the historic scale of fibre-crop production once seen in Ulster, where around 250,000 acres was sown, that would represent up to 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide sequestration per year, subject to independent verification and an agreed carbon accounting methodology.

This is not only an environmental opportunity. It is an economic one. A hemp supply chain creates work for farmers, contractors, hauliers, machinery operators, storage providers and processing staff. It also creates the raw material for Irish-made products in construction, insulation, bedding, textiles and other sectors that are seeking lower carbon materials. The missing piece is processing infrastructure. Farmers will not commit land at scale unless they know the crop can be processed. Connacht Fibre intends to invest in decortication infrastructure in the west of Ireland to separate hemp straw into hurd and fibre. That is the step that turns a field crop into an industrial raw material and keeps value in rural Ireland.

To establish this sector at the scale required, we need Government support. That includes access to appropriate grants and funding for processing infrastructure, a practical and proportionate licensing system, and clear recognition of industrial hemp as a legitimate agricultural and bioeconomy crop. Our ask is straightforward: give farmers a clear route to market; support the processing infrastructure; remove unnecessary barriers; and back Irish fibre crops as part of the solution for farm diversification, rural employment, climate action and the circular economy.

Industrial hemp is a practical, profitable and sustainable opportunity for Irish farmers, rural communities and the wider Irish economy. Connacht Fibre is ready to help build that supply chain. We are asking for the policy and investment support needed to make it happen.

I thank the committee for inviting me to speak about the BioDirect project and the opportunity that industrial hemp presents for Ireland. I am a senior researcher with Munster Technological University, the circular bioeconomy research group and the circular bioeconomy cluster. I am also the project manager of the BioDirect project, an all-island initiative funded by InterTradeIreland and co-ordinated by the circular bioeconomy cluster at Munster Technological University, with the lead partner being the University of Ulster.

Since August 2023, BioDirect has thus far brought together more than 250 stakeholders to engage and identify where Ireland can build stronger bio-based value chains. Our team provides a holistic engagement platform for key stakeholders across agriculture, construction, textiles and manufacturing. Kingspan and Sisk hosted our construction round tables and the newly formed Irish materials working group. Through our eight round-table engagements, we have brought farmers and primary producers together with SMEs, large businesses, researchers, policymakers, Departments, clusters and innovation support organisations from across the island of Ireland. That mix is important. A value chain cannot be developed by one group working on its own. Farmers need to understand what the market requires. Processors need a reliable supply of material. Manufacturers need material of a consistent quality. Buyers need products that are tested, certified and available at the required scale.

Through the value-chain mapping, BioDirect round-table stakeholders highlighted hemp as a valuable source material. It was the most consistent material highlighted across the round tables. It was so consistent at our first BioDirect conference, where the two materials highlighted most were hemp and wool, that we had to bring in experts to talk about those two products. BioDirect findings indicate that hemp can provide materials for several sectors, while creating different income streams along the chain. It begins with cultivation, agronomy, harvesting and storage. It then moves through decortication, where the fibre and inner woody shiv are separated, followed by drying, grading and preparation. These materials can then move into product development, manufacturing, testing, certification and the market. In construction, hemp can be used in insulation, hemp lime products, fibreboards, panels and bio-based composites. In textiles, hemp can be used for fibre, yarn, fabrics, technical textiles and blended products. BioDirect findings clearly indicate a growing demand for hemp and the opportunity to enable Irish agriculture to meet that growing demand for the sustainable materials that these industries are asking for.

Within construction, the performance of a building is no longer considered only in terms of its purchase price or the energy it uses when occupied or being constructed. Increasingly, we must also consider the carbon associated with producing, transporting, using and eventually recovering the materials from which it is made. The recast energy performance of buildings directive reflects that change by bringing the life-cycle global warming potential of new buildings into the assessment of building performance. That creates an important opportunity for Ireland, given that this is already advanced within the bioeconomy. Hemp-based materials like straw, grass, flax and wool, among others, can contribute to insulated buildings and provide alternatives within the construction sector, which must reduce its whole-life carbon impact.

The BioDirect findings demonstrate that Ireland already possesses many of the elements required to develop this opportunity. We have interested farmers, innovative SMEs, established manufacturers, research expertise, large potential users and a strong network of organisations capable of supporting innovation in this area. The value-chain mapping produced as an output of the BioDirect project provides practical evidence of how those elements fit together. It identifies the products with the strongest potential, the infrastructure needed, the links between sectors and the points where targeted support could unlock further development. Hemp should, therefore, be viewed as more than an individual crop. It is the starting point for a wider value chain that can support farm diversification, rural enterprise, new manufacturing activity and lower carbon materials, which, again, are what industry is asking for. BioDirect provides the supporting evidence to connect those strengths and build the conditions in which Irish hemp products can move from the field and seed into real markets and into our buildings and textiles.

I am the CEO of Future Cast, which is an innovation, research and development education organisation for the quarry, construction and manufacturing sectors and the supply chain around that. We started looking at hemp about three years ago, and we identified nine different products. Since then, we have identified about 70 different products that can bring jobs and industry across rural Ireland. We will hand out to committee members a list of the 70 different products. We also have samples with us of real products that can go into the construction industry, including a plywood that we can grow in 90 days, which can be used for shuttering plywood. These products are where we see the real jobs being created.

There are different aspects, such as carbon credits and what we can grow with it, but what we can make from it is key. If members look at the 70 different products that can be developed, they will understand the jobs that can come out of this. We need to get this moving into rural Ireland. We need to look at hemp as an industry that can grow. We have looked at different elements of it. We looked at the machinery around it. We have designed a hemp harvester for the front of a 150 hp tractor that will allow farmers to harvest it, and also similar machinery to seed it. There is a whole industry around the machinery.

Each of the partners here has been looking at this, whether from the academic side or the farmer's side, or with regard to the companies that can be developed. The key to this is what is viable. We need to look at anything that grows in 90 days because, otherwise, it can take 25 years to grow. This is a key product. It is a key product in our industry and in the agricultural industry. We are open to any questions.

I thank the committee for inviting me to present today. I have written a short statement for today's meeting. My statement is focused on the national need for new construction materials and on the tested properties of hemp-based construction materials. The evidence I give here derives from research findings of the building in a climate emergency research group at the UCD school of architecture, planning and environmental policy.

Ireland is today building lots of buildings, while at the same time it is legally obliged to reduce its carbon emissions to meet its ambitious carbon budgets. Contemporary construction is inherently carbon-intensive. More buildings will add more carbon emissions. In the short term, this derives from the emissions embodied in the materials they are constructed with. National modelling studies of the built environment undertaken by our group have shown that even if we achieve operational energy savings through retrofit and greater energy efficiency measures, these savings will be cancelled out by the embodied emissions deriving from the scale of new construction. We need to identify new low-carbon building materials to lessen the impact of necessary construction. The Climate Action Plan 2025 calls for a 30% reduction in the embodied carbon of construction materials by 2030.

Hemp-based building materials are a low-carbon option. A hemp lime or hempcrete mixture can embody a third of the carbon of concrete before biogenic carbon is accounted for. When the carbon absorbed during the growth cycle of the plant is subtracted, the material can be classified as a carbon-negative building material. More carbon is absorbed during the growth of the material than in its production. This is a unique benefit of bio-based materials.

The increased use of timber in residential scheme housing construction in recent years has seen the embodied carbon of housing reduce. However, the full potential of embodied carbon savings is not achieved while other elements remain as heavy embodied carbon components. Hempcrete, hemp lime, hemp insulation and hemp sheeting are building products that can infill and finish timber buildings.

Hempcrete does not just insulate a building from the cold; its thermal mass flattens the peaks and valleys of daily temperature cycles, enabling a stable indoor environment.

Our research measured the key thermal mass-related parameters. Conductivity is approximately one tenth that of conventional concrete and the thermal diffusivity is roughly one quarter. Although it is not as insulating as standard insulation products, it benefits from a higher density which is essential for thermal mass. These optimum set of thermal and moisture parameters are all related to the inherent porosity between and within the well-structured shiv.

Hemp is a good material for building conservation and momentum is building to reuse our built and vacant buildings. I have previously discussed in this forum how the reuse of vacant buildings can save considerable embodied carbon relative to building housing anew. However, old buildings in Ireland are often wet. We need to allow these buildings to breathe and we need to ensure we do not stop them breathing when we retrofit them. Hemp-based products offer a solution for the retrofit of old buildings. New buildings can be wet too, either due to wetting during construction or due to defects allowing unwanted water ingress. Today we wrap and tightly seal these buildings but alternatively we could allow vapour diffuse through them and reduce the risk of moisture trapping, mould build-up and the myriad which have plagued retrofit and which are being highlighted in the UK.

Hemp is a material with properties appropriate to the Irish context. It should be part of the mix. It is a material that achieves and surpasses the 30% reduction in embodied carbon required by our climate action plan for building materials. Hemp can be part of the solution to increase housing output and renovate the building we have while limiting building-related emissions. Faster evolution of regulatory frameworks are required generally in Ireland to support innovation in building materials. Bio-based, as well as concrete and MMC innovations, await access to market.

I thank the Cathaoirleach and members for the invitation to speak. I am here in my capacity as Teagasc energy and rural development specialist. I have had a great passion for this crop over the years. We grew it in our crop research centre in Oakpark in Carlow for a number of years. It is the strongest plant fibre in the world, so it is a very interesting crop.

Farm diversification is a key strategic pillar within the Teagasc statement of strategy 2025-2028. Recognising the income pressures facing Irish farm families and the need for more resilient and sustainable agricultural systems, Teagasc’s rural economy development programme actively supports farmers in exploring diversification opportunities. This is achieved through farm business options webinars, in-person courses delivered throughout the Teagasc regions and the development of fact sheets, including one specifically focused on industrial hemp. Teagasc works closely with industry to develop and support these opportunities. We co-organised the National Hemp Conference in 2019 in association with Hemp Cooperative Ireland. We organised another conference in March 2025 together with industry partners to explore the contributions of hemp towards profitable farming. These engagements reflect our commitment to building the knowledge base and networks essential for a viable, sustainable hemp sector in Ireland. I also chaired a hemp working group prior to this pre-Covid period because there was such a strong interest from industry and farmers in growing the crop.

Hemp is a versatile crop. Its various uses have already been outlined. This breadth of application underlines why the crop warrants serious attention as a diversification option for Irish agriculture and as a contributor to the wider bio-economy. To give an idea of Teagasc's research legacy with the crop, research started back in the 1950s. In the 1960s, Michael Neelan pioneered studies on hemp agronomy and fibre use for paper and textiles. In the 1990s, Jim Crowley explored hemp as a feedstock for medium-density fibreboard - this was done in association with Medite in Clonmel - and focused on agronomy and the evaluation of new hemp varieties. From 2008 to 2012, Dr. John Finnan was interested in research on hemp as an energy crop. All of this research was geared towards the agronomy of hemp, though there were different uses of hemp in mind. This work has shown hemp can be grown well in Ireland and has established the basics of crop production in terms of sowing dates, seed rates, varieties, harvesting techniques, etc. These were the areas that were researched during that time. It has also shown that the crop can be grown with little or no requirement for plant protection products in a wide variety of soils. However, if grown more widely, pests and disease could become a problem over time. It has also established the crop nutrient input requirements are quite low, but there is a requirement. Teagasc has included this in the green book, entitled Major and Micro Nutrient Advice For Productive Agricultural Crops.

Our current activities in this area include working with industry on creating awareness through conferences and webinars and facilitating industry contacts in this area. It has already been outlined that hemp can be used in construction, for biocomposites and that it has a role in the bio-economy. The THC limits were also outlined. The EU has increased the allowable THC content for industrial hemp from 0.2% to 0.3% dry weight for cultivation and direct payment eligibility under the Common Agricultural Policy. In Ireland, hemp cultivation is regulated by the Health Products Regulatory Authority, HPRA, with strict licensing requirements, including that flowers and heads are not harvested.

Challenges within the sector include the absence of local processing infrastructure, which has already been highlighted here. The need for investment and the importance of legislative clarity are widely recognised as key challenges for the sector’s development. These challenges are not unique to Ireland and are being addressed across Europe through collaborative research, investment and policy dialogue.

The key takeaway is that with continued investment, research and a supportive regulatory environment, industrial hemp could play a role in Ireland’s economic and environmental future. Industrial hemp represents a strategic opportunity for Ireland as it would potentially deliver economic, environmental and social benefits. Teagasc is proud to contribute to the evidence base supporting the sector’s development and stands ready to work with all stakeholders to realise the full potential of this crop. I thank members for their attention.

Thank you all for your opening statements. We have about ten minutes per member if we want to go with that. If members have questions for the witnesses to my left they should direct them to Mr. O'Reilly and he will allocate them to the relevant people. If they have questions for Teagasc or Dr. Kinnane, they should go directly there.

I thank all the witnesses for coming in. I have been well aware of hemp for many years. I was involved in a project about 20 years ago where we renovated old cottages using eco materials. The extensions we built on them were built using timber frames with hempcrete infill. Some of them used mud locally as well. That was one of the materials that was added in and it worked extremely well. The people who live in some of those cottages today say the extensions are the warmer, fresher and better parts of the houses to live in compared with the old stone parts.

It is, therefore, a product I have been very much aware of down the years. I am conscious that even back then farmers growing it had to get a licence to do so. I understand farmers had not got a difficulty obtaining the licences. In general when they applied for them, they got them. However, that it was licensed and there was all that ambiguity about it caused a series of issues and I have a couple of questions to get clarity and have it on the record of the committee. First of all, one of the reasons people feel they have to be licensed is, if you are growing 20 acres of hemp, you could be growing cannabis plants in the middle of that and nobody would know. I would like someone to clear that up, because it is important to clear up. I know that cannot happen or I certainly believe it cannot but I would like the experts here to clear that up.

We saw the products that were passed around. The wood-effect products are basically a construction material that can be used, as I think Mr. O'Hara said, as shuttering plywood. It can obviously be used in a structural context as well. The speed with which hemp grows and the means it provides of having carbon absorption by a product that is going to be trapped in a house so quickly, compared with waiting 40 years for forestry to grow, is one of the key things that is very important about this crop.

I would like to get comments in respect of those two points.

I will direct the Deputy's first question around growing cannabis in a field of hemp to Dr. Melzer.

I am a plant biologist who has been working with hemp for about six or seven years. I will address the difference between high THC cannabis, which produces a drug that makes someone high, and hemp. They are of the same species and theoretically both can grow in Ireland but THC is only produced in the female flowers and by the nature of the plant, producing flowers is difficult in Ireland because once the plant starts producing the flowers, it gets cold and damp in September. The larger problem is that as soon as the flowers are pollinated, the plant would stop producing more flowers and then one would not get THC anymore but if one grew those female plants producing THC and surrounded them with hemp that produces loads of pollen, one would immediately basically destroy the potency of the cannabis plant so that would really not work at all.

So basically it is not possible for that to happen. First, we do not have the climate because obviously in these situations where the cannabis plant has grown, we are talking about grow houses where there is an awful lot of heat and we would not have that out in the field. Second, it would basically be smothered by the other plants around.

I think the farmers who are growing hemp are probably the least likely to want to engage in those activities because they are probably aware that they are growing something that is a bit unusual and that they are watched more closely.

Regarding the Deputy's second question, we might go back to Mr. O'Hara on wood.

That is a 25 ml structure or product. The reality is that could be any width. It could be 50 ml. It could be in the structure of a house or a modern methods of construction, MMC, house. It depends what applications one is looking at. Each of those products has different values and that is why we need more research and development. We have a full science and materials lab in Leitrim looking at the science and the certification of it and how we bring it into industry. Each of those products is very valuable. I am giving an example of shuttering ply. That is a high-volume industry around the world. This is a product we cut with an ordinary skill saw. It is the same pressure as oak so when one compresses it together and gives that density to it, it is a key product that could be brought into MMC in different designs of housing. It is something that one can grow in 90 to 100 days compared to something that one grows in 30 to 40 years. There is a key product here for the construction industry but it is about defining it, having more research and development on it and bringing it into certification. There is a process to that but we have to get on that journey, look at the process and approve it through industry validation.

Mr. O'Reilly mentioned the problem caused by the fact that all hemp is classified in the situation where one has to get the licence for it. Change is happening in Europe. What change do we need to see happen here in order to free up this industry? Mr. O'Reilly mentioned about not having less regulation but clearer regulation. Could he expand on that? What exactly does he mean?

When we look across Europe for benchmarks, hemp is under the CAP. Most countries would give licensing to industrial hemp for fibre and stock through their agriculture departments but in Ireland, it is done through the HPRA. That is creating a lot of ambiguity because from an enforcement perspective, it is hard to distinguish between a legitimate agricultural crop and something that is potentially an illicit crop so we are looking for Department-led oversight of industrial hemp that would cover specific strains that only grow with fibre. We are not talking about any other use cases for hemp except for its use case in textiles and the construction sector.

So Mr. O'Reilly wants those particular strains to be taken out of the health bracket and put into the agriculture bracket. That is the ask.

Exactly.

That is the primary ask that would make a big difference.

Exactly. That would open up doors and industrial pathways and give Mr. Morgan, Mr. Reilly and other farmers a lot more confidence. It would give investors a lot more confidence. If Mr. Donoghue was to come in here and invest in Ireland then maybe the committee could agree he would only do so if that policy aligned with the rest of Europe and had it as an agricultural crop as opposed to being HPRA and Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration-led. I am not saying that the HPRA and the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration should not have oversight of the narcotic end of things because they should. It still a public risk but agricultural hemp for fibre and herd should in our opinion, and we all agree on this, be under the oversight of the Department of Agriculture and Food.

How profitable will it be for the farmer? Obviously, it is an industry in its infancy and is going to need time to develop. Many years ago, sectors that were developed in Ireland such as our forestry sector were developed by the State through Coillte. When it perfected it, it took off. It had the deep pockets to take the risks. Do we need something similar to happen today? How do the witnesses see the industry developing in the country? In other words, who is going to pay for the initial outlay to ensure this happens?

I am from Hemp Block International. I am from Australia, live in France and have Irish heritage. I thank the committee for having me here today. We operate in about six different countries. We have been doing this for eight years. We have set up an Irish-registered company and want to set up our headquarters in Ireland. Eventually we will have eight subsidiaries around the world. We want to put manufacturing in here for our blocks but we cannot do that because we need 15,000 metric tonnes of hemp per year, which equates to about 2,400 ha. That is really important for us. We are willing to make an investment of up to €20 million to get the infrastructure in here and if the farmers are able to grow the hemp that we need to the right quality and quantity, we want to set up a manufacturing facility and our headquarters here. That will equate to putting about 70 jobs in Ireland in direct manufacturing and also a headquarters. All the subsidiaries will come under this company, so it is strategically very important for us. This big collaborative group is fantastic. Some of our partners are in France and in Europe and it is easier to get things happening. The basic message from me is that we are an end-user so we are the demand side and that is where we need the farmers. That is why I am here today to support it. We are willing to come here and be involved in this when it gets moving.

Going back to licensing, I have had a serious interest in this area for a while and drafted a Bill I shared with some of those present called the agricultural products (industrial hemp) Bill. It is still not ready because it is very complicated. We have to start with a proper and easy licensing process. That is an inhibitor at the moment because it is in the Departments of health and justice. We need to get it into the Department of Agriculture and Food. Those are the bones of the Bill. I shared it with some of the members of the witnesses' organisations and I would like it to circulate among all the witnesses and for them to come back with feedback because that is the first thing we have to change. The money is good as is sequestration.

This crop is unbelievable. I do not know why we have been slow and are almost not producing and exporting it. It has got everything. We are talking about something that is environmental friendly. We have had numerous meetings here recently about our tillage crisis and now we are hearing about a crop that can return up to €350 an acre and grow in a couple of months. When one does the research and looks into it, if it is an intermediate crop, it yields even more the following year because the soil is improved.

It has everything in its favour. We have to go back to square one, which is the licensing. That is the inhibitor at the moment. I would like feedback from all the witnesses but maybe not here today. I am going to run with that Bill, let it go through the Houses and see then when we get amendments and whatever on it. Until we have a proper licensing system, it is going to be very hard to encourage people.

The sugar beet model was mentioned. We all know how that works. It is ideal for this. The contracted sugar beet model where farmers are contracted and know what they are getting for their crop. They are not waiting to see what the price will be on the day of the harvest. It is contracted. That is ideal from a farming perspective. However, we are the agriculture committee so we are going to talk more about the licensing side, the growing side and the farmer side of it. I would also like to hear a little more about how we get the enterprise model. We probably need to be talking to the enterprise committee as well.

We have talked about this. I am on this committee since 2016. This is not the first time we have talked about hemp but we are still in the same position we were the last time we were talking about it, unfortunately. I should be ashamed to say that but that is the way it is. We need to actually see results and get this up and running. I want to hear from the witnesses. Licensing aside, because I started the wheels in motion on that, what is the next thing we can do that will actually start this rolling along the road and, from an agricultural and industrial perspective, get it up and running?

If we look at the 2022 public consultation, they deemed the fibre industry non-viable because of the lack of industry engagement but there are experts in the room today who can show there is huge interest from industry. I can pass the Senator to a number of people here such as Mr. Barry-Hannon, Mr. O'Hara and go back to Mr. Donoghue if he wants to follow up.

I agree totally. We are showing 70 products there today. If there were only 100 jobs on each of them, it is 7,000 jobs. The industry model has to be pushed hard here. We have talked to Enterprise Ireland and, in fairness, there was a grant designed for a first-time harvester. We are on that journey but we need the backing of the committee to talk to Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland to keep pushing that journey forward. We believe the jobs that can come out of this are in rural Ireland. It is about looking at the decortication, machinery, drying process and the needs of the processing plants.

We need to look at the funding. There was a new EU policy last November. We need to adapt that EU policy. We need to look at the CAP agreement and the policy under that, the draft and what is coming up in the next CAP agreement. We need to have it in that. There are different steps we need to take along the way. It will also always come back to science. Science is going to be the key to this, along with certification. Within the construction industry, we cannot take the volume off it but we have to do the certification. I am on the advanced manufacturing council of the NSAI and what we do there is to keep pushing across our standards within that. Bring up that conversation with each of the agencies as it is a multi-agency approach that our group here today is looking for.

On the demand side, the BioDirect project brings all of those stakeholders together: manufacturing, agriculture, construction and textiles. The aim is to accelerate the bioeconomy and the circular economy. We separated all of those sectors and then brought them together. Sectors act in silos, but now we have developed a model over the three years where all these sectors are coming together and not just the sectors but also the players within the sectors. SMEs, large businesses, policymakers, researchers and innovation support groups were all in those rooms. We had over 250 stakeholders and a really nice mix.

I highlighted some of the materials but hemp and wool were by far the two top materials mentioned by all of those round-tables. We have started the exercise. We were talking about industry as well. In BioDirect 2.0, we actually developed value chains for all of the products and all of the materials that were mentioned. There is the demand. We have the value chains there and they are already in the briefing notes.

I could add something to that from being in industry in Australia and in a number of other countries. The demand for wellness real estate - healthy, safe, comfortable, energy-efficient homes - is what is driving the whole market around these types of products. I thought that may be of interest.

I may open that up to Mr. McDermott and Mr. Daly, if they have anything to add.

We are working with hempcrete coming up on ten years across the country. We import our products. We are finding we are working with people who have an interest in being healthy. They want to have homes that are free of harmful chemicals. They want to have homes resilient to the Irish climate. We live in a very damp climate. Hempcrete, which has been mentioned a few times, is a mix of hemp and lime and it naturally regulates the interior humidity to 50% inside a home. We have a chemical-free home that is regulating its own humidity and creating essentially a microclimate. This has such good effects on the occupants of the house. The mix, which is mainly hemp, lasts for over 200 years. At the end of its life, it is fully biodegradable. There are so many key points that hemp in construction makes. We use hemp fibre in the roof spaces. We use hemp underlay under wooden floors. We use hemp underlay under carpets. Our big push is to bring that chemical-free, healthy, long-lasting home to the Irish customer. Hemp is essentially almost too good to be true.

The first step in the move from the agricultural sphere to the industrial sphere is decortication. Without that, we do not get the separation of the long fibres and the small shive that can go to various sectors. It is quite fundamental that is in place. Unlike other processing techniques, such as straw, it is a larger investment with, basically, bigger plants. There are two options there. One is to let the market do that, which we have been doing for the past 15 or 20 years, and the market has looked at that and has not seen that as a viable option at the moment. Second, like other member states in Europe such as the Netherlands, it is possible for the Government to become a strategic supporter of that bottleneck and make strategic investment. I recommend that is what needs to happen. We identified this in my research for the EPA on hemp-lime as a biocomposite in 2012, looking at its potential fit within Ireland and whether it could meet Irish building regulations, both of which were found to be positive. We identified decortication as a bottleneck. That is a critical one.

Next up the supply chain is the manufacturing. Once they can get those two materials, they can see the demand and interest here to invest and utilise those materials and the diversity of products from them. The reason construction is important in relation to hemp is that nearly 50% and sometimes 60% produced when they decorticate is the shive. Let us call it a chip. It is a small chip. Shive is another name for it. That is effectively the waste. The fibre has generally been the industrial focus of hemp. You cannot get another bio-based fibre like hemp. It is exceptionally strong. The shive is effectively a low-value waste product and the construction sector in France basically grew out of that. That is where hemp construction came from. If we have that shive in Ireland, we then have a potential construction application. We have discussed the boards and mixing it with a lime binder. Various products can be made. What is critical is the manufacturers want to do it. The contractors, building developers and architects are very aware that, with the change in the fourth European building performance directive, EBPD, they are switching from energy efficiency in buildings to total energy and total carbon, which will include the materials. We are being approached in the university by manufacturers asking me what this is looking like and how they can decarbonise.

We are going to see in the next five years an increasing demand from manufacturers and from architects for low-carbon materials. Yet, the only place they can get them at the moment is imported. We are import-dependent.

Does Dr. Kinnane want to get in on that point?

Just to say that I support all of those points. The market is really strong. Currently, we are supposed to be retrofitting a quarter of our building stock - 500,000 homes - by 2030. There is almost no better product to retrofit with than hemp-based products in the Irish environment where we have very high relative humidity levels. Hemp, as Mr. McDermott said, has this wonderful and unique moisture-buffering ability. One of the real problems we are seeing at the moment, or that the UK is seeing, is bad retrofit using vapour impermeable building materials that are trapping moisture within building fabrics and creating air quality issues, mould and mildew within properties. Hemp can avoid all of that. It can allow moisture breathe from old walls. That is one of the major benefits and why we really support it within the building science retrofit conservation space. It is an ideal building material.

I will put my hands up and say I am no expert in these things. I am a qualified medical doctor. I am not a farmer, an agricultural expert or a building expert or that but I met Mr. Morgan and Mr. Reilly and I heard their story. They explained the story of hemp very well to me and it caught my interest on a whole range of levels. I will not rehash what everyone has said here because they are all experts in this. However, it seems absolutely crazy to me that there is some impediment to developing this industry in Ireland, given all of the benefits in terms of farming, crop rotation and a cash crop for farmers, especially in the west of Ireland where there is not as much tillage. This crop can grow pretty much in any land but it is a good rotation crop, I am told, for even better land in other parts of the country. There is the inability to get grant aid for decortication, from what I gather, and not joining the dots with industry and demand. Our experts here are telling us that these building materials that can come out of both the bast fibre and the hurd or shive, if that is the right terminology. Everyone is in the room here but there is no link. I would not normally say that but it really need the State on this occasion to join that link. I spoke to Mr. Morgan previously. It would appear there is some sort of prejudice against this plant because it is of the cannabis family, even though industrial hemp is a completely different entity to the cannabis plant that is grown to produce drugs. That seems to be the first thing. It would seem that even when dealing with State agencies to get a grant, that is a question mark over it. Would it be fair to say that? I throw that out to Mr. Morgan.

Yes, it would. We are just coming up against a block consistently when we are applying for grants.

Has Mr. Morgan applied for grants?

We have through Mr. Daly and the just transition fund six or eight months ago. We missed out on that even though we had a very strong application. We missed out on that and we are convinced it was a bias against hemp that caused that.

Was the proposition that Connacht Fibre would have a decortication plant, farmers who would grow under licence and that it had industry set up to take the decorticated material into industry and produce-----

It would produce the hemp block and hemp board-----

I just cannot understand this for the west of Ireland. We are talking about west Roscommon or-----

Well, we are in east Galway.

-----east Galway, whatever you want to call it, but it is the west of Ireland. Something like this is exactly what just transition funding is supposed to be for. It is to create jobs in an agri-economy and to support it, to support our farming network of communities in which we are seeing depopulation and where we do not see enough industry, and that is support is not coming through. Has anyone here spoken to the Department of agriculture about this?

Yes. It all boils down to the fact that hemp itself is a Schedule 1 narcotic under the Misuse of Drugs Act. That was amended in 2017. It was subject to applicable licence but there was a special amendment that the fibre and the hurd could still be used. However, there was still ambiguity around it and it caused confusion, as I mentioned in my opening statement, not only for myself when I was in customs and excise around enforcement around how I could distinguish between a legitimate agricultural crop and an illicit drug. To answer the question as to whether I have spoken with the Department, the Department sees it as a strategic priority within the bio-economy, but aside from that I am not sure-----

Did the officials in the Department show interest? Did they embrace it?

Yes, they showed interest.

It should be embraced. I cannot understand why it would not be embraced.

The officials in the Department showed great interest. Again, if they could manage to oversee the licensing for the industrial hemp itself but then to allow the HPRA and the Department of justice to still have that oversight over hemp for other use cases in food and things like that, and then look at it from an illicit drugs perspective as well. It is important to distinguish those and to have clarity for the likes of Mr. Morgan here and for investment coming in. Without that we are going to be having this same conversation in another five years.

So, what Senator Paul Daly is trying to do then is to get this out of health and into agriculture. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. The briefs that I got explained it very well in that there is a regulatory framework in the European Union. This is a CAP crop. Again, if anyone wants to correct me I ask them to please do, but this is a CAP crop. It is a major crop in France, Belgium and Germany and we do not have to reinvent the wheel here.

No.

There is licensing for particular hemp plants and seeds with the low THC content. The witnesses can correct me if I am wrong on any of the technical parts of this. We are in the European Union.

Exactly.

We were down in Dublin Castle today. We have the Presidency for the next six months. Is this not what it is supposed to be about, that we should be able to cross these lines?

We should be aligning with that framework because it includes variety control, seed certification, labelling and also geospatial declarations. Therefore, if there was concern from a public health point of view, we refer back to that framework.

If I may come in there, we talked to the Departments of agriculture, justice and enterprise on this because we have been looking at this for the last three years and we designed with the hemp farmers first. We probably visited about 40 farmers all around Ireland. Some are very successful in what they are doing and the different processes they are doing but it is on their own bat. Some engineering companies are growing. Padraig Corby in south Leitrim designed a decorticator probably two years ago. Each agency is very open to moving this on but it is all to do with policy. It is key that we adopt the EU policy that came out last November into the Irish regulatory system and that goes down the stream into the Departments. That is the key to it. We are asking this committee to help that and to get Enterprise Ireland or the Department of agriculture to come on to this.

Deputy Daly mentioned that all the expert witnesses are here but that there is a lack of joining of the dots, to put it that way. I recommend an interesting model that is happening in the Netherlands where, because it affects rural development, enterprise, construction, etc., a range of government departments and agencies co-funded a market activation team to establish these type of regional local supply chains. They are three or four years into their national project at the moment and they have set up about 12 supply chains of a range of bio-based materials, including miscanthus and straw, but also hemp. I think an initiative like that would be something the committee could consider.

That initiative is called building balance, if committee members want to know the name of it. Effectively, it is a market activation team. Perhaps an initiative like that, which would bring expertise across the supply chain, together with some funding, direction and strategic funding to support it, could accelerate the transition that we need. If we leave it exclusively to the market, there is a possibility that it will go slower, whereas if there is intervention to facilitate, we can speed this up. We are really behind the curve on a European level. This is well established in many European nations.

On the cross-departmental aspect, Departments seem to be getting involved. There are other Departments within the Government that are interested in this because there was a meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate, Environment and Energy on 22 October 2025 which engaged with the construction industry directly. The Construction Industry Federation, the Irish Green Building Council and some researchers were there. One of the materials they recommended was hemp. We are seeing it across these different things. One of the recommendations, and Mr. Daly mentioned it, was to set up a group of multi-stakeholders that brings in the Departments along with the farmers and manufacturers the whole way across. While we have engaged, and Mr. Daly is involved, with the Irish Green Building Council, it is drawing up terms of reference with us for the Irish materials working group, which will be looking at hemp and bringing the whole value chain together.

The witnesses are all welcome. No more than Senator Daly, we have been at this for a number of years. I agree that policy is the problem in the whole thing. There are not many industries that you can say somebody has stated that they are prepared to come to this country, set up a business, make a product, put the money and workforce into it and still we are looking at them and we are not prepared to get the raw material ready for that person. That is a damning statement of any country.

I have a few questions. I will try to get through them as quickly as I can. Who are the farmers likely to be growing industrial hemp?

Initially, it was aimed at part-time farmers, people who would be in full-time employment and who were either low-intensive farmers or who had land they are not using.

What sort of land?

Average land. It does not need to be exceptional land. We had a sugar beet industry and a sugar factory in Tuam, County Galway. The land is there, more than good enough to grow hemp. What we initially were aiming at was the lad who does not want to be seven days a week. He is working five days a week and wants to restore a work-life balance and use that land. It is also the tillage man, because they want to use it as a break crop, as has been said. You can go from one extreme to the other and any farmer in between. The bottom line is, if you can offer €300 or €350 an acre profit for a crop that does not require any pesticides or a small amount of nutrients in terms of NPK, and is not weather dependent like a lot of our tillage crops, in a lot of minds, from talking to lads, it is a no-brainer. That is the bottom line. Hemp's appeal to the farmer nowadays is across the board.

What happens if you have a bad year? I remember as a youngster having stacks of oats out or stooking oats, turning them and twisting them.

We looked across the world and looked at pyrolysis and pyrolysis technology. We were in Germany a couple of weeks ago looking at where we bring hemp into a pyrolysis biochar. What research we are doing at the moment is between biochar-activated carbon and graphene. I left this morning and we were mixing biochar into concrete, looking at creating low-carbon concrete. We are 3D printing it for housing. We are looking at a new product there. The pyrolysis technology is there. It is something we are trying to bring into Ireland.

An expert has started with us a couple of weeks ago, but it is the value of the biochar. The thing about concrete and lower carbon in concrete is that, hemp can be one single line of sites. It can be hemp 75 that can go into a biochar. It can be granulated down and brought into activated carbon in the concrete. It gives you the whole scientific analysis that we can do certification straight through to the industry. It has that aspect of it. Hemp and willow are the two main products. It also has the carbon credits. It has the major carbon credits. We are talking about 320 ha of carbon credits that could be coming down in the next aspect of it. It is an industry that has a carbon credit. It is an industry that we can use such as in the likes of concrete to lower the carbon of the concrete. It can also be identified on an analysis base and a like site analysis.

What is the load-bearing weight of hemp if you are building? I have seen a fascinating block that came from France. You would lay them all there, put it that way; you would not be afraid of them. They are a fine job. Is there a load-bearing weight or do you put a steel frame around it?

You have to put a structural frame around it for the majority of its blocks. It is only 8.35 MPa. The thing is, you do not want a dense hemp, because what it does is it will destroy the level of insulation, sound, breathability and so on and so forth. A block was built in Canada. It was dense, but the insulation rating was half of what a normal hemp block is. As Mr. McDermott pointed out about the breathability and those sorts of things, that is why these blocks are big. There is no mortar. They go up really fast and all the framing gets put in. We actually reduced the carbon footprint to negative carbon in the building system.

How many hectares per year are needed?

On full production in a factory, we would need 2,400 ha, which is around 15,000 metric tonnes of hemp. It is quite significant. As far as risk management, the Deputy asked about what happens if there is a bad season. What we are looking at in the other areas in the world where we are putting in factories is at mitigating some of that risk by having bales stored, as is done with hay, so then they can be decorticated and used. As we will have a number of factories, it will be a distributed system and not megafactories everywhere.

Mr. Donoghue used the word "decorticated". Is it a machine that does that?

That is what the farmers are talking about here.

What is the price of one of those machines?

It will be up to €12 million, depending on what size a person wants per hour.

That is not too bad.

It depends on the quality. There is all sorts of different equipment out there, but what you pay for is what you get. Then it depends on the usability. We need 15,000 tonnes, but we do not need it processed at the same time. It is up to the industry to decide here, based on what our requirements are of what type and how much they want to spend on decortication. Manufacturing equipment is quite expensive, and the decortication is going to be something similar. It would be approximately €20 million to €30 million to set up processing and production of products.

To Mr. O'Reilly, in relation to talking to the Department, I think the big stumbling block on this is between the Department of Health, the Department of justice and the Department of agriculture. Everyone is wary, sometimes for right reasons. Has any approach been made for a licence specifically for industrial hemp for construction?

Not at the moment, no. I will pass that on to Mr. Morgan, if he wants to comment.

I want to comment on the last point made by Mr. Donoghue. We can get a decorticator. They are not going to cost that much and their prices are coming down. We have looked at decorticators in Canada and Poland that are running and will decorticate 2 tonnes of hemp an hour. They will come in at about €250,000 at the moment.

However, Mr. Donoghue is talking about some of the decortication systems the likes of Tatham have, which are up at €3 million or €4 million. We do not need to go there to get the level of decortication for a hemlock or for the fibre for insulation. If we go to textile fibre, we need a different or better level. Most decorticators are modular. People start with something basic and add sections to it that give longer fibre and cleaner hurd as they go through.

I agree with that statement.

To reach the target of 15,000 tonnes, that should be bigger.

The Deputy is talking about 2 tonnes per hour, so 2,000 acres per year is what we would be looking at.

Connacht Fibre has been selling in IDA Ireland in Athlone and Enterprise Ireland. A door has always opened but nothing has ever happened because of policy. Can Mr. Caslin and Mr. Barry Hannon come in on this? We do not have any policy. Everyone talks about it. I have heard people talk about cutting it with scythes and mowing machines and every type of thing for the past ten years, since I came into the Oireachtas, and we are still no further advanced. Would Senator Daly's Bill solve something if we were all to support it? How can we try to get this on the road, even as a pilot project for the first year, to start with?

First, why should we look for this crop to be grown in tillage systems, especially? One of the first questions the Deputy asked was: who are the first farmers who would adopt this? As part of our climate action plan, we have a target to increase the tillage area to 400,000 ha. We are hovering around 300,000 ha at the moment and we are contracting rather than expanding the tillage area. We are going in the opposite direction, so the tillage industry is crying out for new crops to diversify into but it will not invest in those crops unless there is a clear market outlet for them. In the context of 300,000 ha of tillage, we are small compared with other European countries. Only 9% of our utilisable agricultural area is in tillage. Germany and England have a majority of their land in tillage crops as opposed to grassland. If we create demand, to meet our climate action plan targets, farmers would respond to it and grow the crop.

Senator Daly mentioned earlier its relevance as a break crop, to improve the soil. The taproot nature of the hemp improves aeration in the soil and farmers get higher yields from subsequent crops of wheat. There can be a bounce of up to 10% or 12% in subsequent wheat crops. They are all need factors. The sugar beet industry was alluded to earlier. That industry disappeared around 2006 and it was a valuable break crop in tillage agricultural systems. Tillage farmers especially are looking for a break crop that will be good for their soil and that will pay. If farmers are offered a contract - for example, Mr. Donoghue has a proposal - it can be suggested to tillage advisers in Teagasc that it is a meaningful contract and that farmers can grow the crop. It is not a long-term crop like willow or miscanthus where ground is taken up for 20 plus years. It is an annual crop, so it is possible to diversify into it for a year and dedicate an area of land to it, if a business was being developed, like Mr. Donoghue is proposing. I think there would be massive interest in it.

I am learning as we go along. The frightening thing is that the witnesses started in 2016 and we are no further on. That frightens me. However, for a crop that can guarantee €350 per acre, there would be a huge number of people who would jump at it. I cannot understand it. It can be grown in any soil. It looks to be very good for soil. It is not possible to grow beet in just any soil. Farmers have to have good land to grow beet. I am just making that point. I saw it. I pulled it. It got bet into wet land and I had to pull it by hand. It all depends on the type.

This would be fantastic. The only thing I am nervous about is that I hear it has been going on for ten years and we are no further advanced. That is what I am afraid of. It seems to be a win-win situation. The off product of it looks great. Everyone is giving out about the price of insulation, so if we had it while the building boom was going on, we would have a great a little country for manufacturing that. We would be self-sufficient in it, rather than having to import it.

The Teagasc crops research centre at Oak Park in Carlow has done a lot of work and I congratulate it. I never had an opportunity to say it. I know a lot of people who worked in research down through the years.

We are in a situation, despite what was said that tillage would increase by 4% or 5%, that tillage is going in the opposite direction. There is less and less tillage and there will be less and less tillage with the price of grain. That is it. That is why, if I were to tell people that we had people encouraging us to try to get the Government to put all its ducks in a row to grow hemp and they could guarantee up to €350 per ha, there would be no problem getting people to sow it. That is certain.

I have a few questions to educate myself. I am a farmer. What single regulatory change would most immediately accelerate domestic hemp cultivation and processing? These are just quickfire questions.

As I mentioned earlier, moving industrial hemp from the Health Products Regulatory Authority, HPRA, to Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine oversight is number one.

That is number one to kick us off.

Can I add to that? One of the things in licensing that is important to us is for the individual to be licensed rather than the area of ground that is grown and for it to be for five years. At the moment, we go into the HPRA with, for example a ten acre field. We have to register that field and that is where it has to be sown. As growers, we would like to be licensed for five years or at least have that as an option. Then we could plan ahead.

Can the witnesses identify the current production bottleneck? It is licensing, is it not? It is not harvesting or processing capacity

The bottleneck is decortication.

How competitive is Irish grown hemp fibre compared with imported alternatives? What budget measure would close the cost gap?

Mr. McDermott is probably best placed to answer that because he buys it overseas at the moment.

On the quality of the hurd, we just look for construction grade shiv. I have used a small amount of Irish hurd in the past and it was perfectly comparable with European hurd.

If Mr. McDermott could get it here, he would take it.

I would take the Deputy's hand off.

How much is Mr. McDermott buying it for?

We probably get it for-----

To prevent cereal farmers altogether. How much does he give for it?

That is price sensitive.

We would give approximately €2 per kg.

If I were to sow an acre of it in the morning, how much would Mr. McDermott buy it for?

If I got it for half that, it would be a real advantage for the Irish customer.

Yes, but how much would I get per acre? How much would it work out at for me? Did someone say €350 per acre?

No, what we are saying, sorry-----

It is about money at the end of the day, for everyone.

If farmers sow hemp, they will get €250 per tonne, so they will get €1,000 for a 4 tonne crop, that is €1,000 per acre for the crop. There are a lot of estimates that say a crop will produce 5 tonnes or 6 tonnes but we are taking it at 4 tonnes. In our business plan, we have priced the shiv we sell to Mr. McDermott at about €600 per tonne. That is the difference after the processing, when it goes on to Mr. McDermott.

I was asking how competitive is Irish-grown hemp so the answer is it would be.

It would be very competitive, yes.

What is the realistic annual production potential if Government support for hemp construction materials was expanded?

There is no limit. In Ulster, in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, there were 250,000 acres of flax and hemp sown. That is no different from the land in the west of Ireland and we are capable of doing that in the exact same way.

Hemp is part of the bio-based material family in construction. In Europe we are only at 3%. We need to see a massive acceleration of bio-based materials like hemp into construction if we are going to decarbonise the construction sector. We are only at a tiny beginning. The scale and scope is really significant. There is big potential.

Which specific building sector incentives such as procurement rules on green materials subsidies would most rapidly increase the demand for hemp-based products?

It is right across. Look at social housing or retrofitting. If someone is looking at a retrofitting grant, the insulation they will be using at the moment will be high carbon so what you are doing is front-loading carbon. This gives a low-based carbon insulation. The Deputy asked about the tonnage that is used. Every one of those 70 different aspects is bringing a different tonnage when it is calculated.

I wanted to ask about the carbon sequestration but I think Mr. O’Hara answered that because it is way above.

It is way above.

What data around hemp production should inform national climate policy? I am just trying to tick all the boxes because this is all positive as far as I can see. Everyone is saying it.

There is huge research done globally - across the US and Europe – on different types. It is already there.

It is ticking the boxes for that as well.

It is already there. There is new policy in Europe from last November. It is there. What we need to do is adopt the policy here and move it forward.

What are the key scientific or regulatory barriers preventing hemp from being fully integrated into mainstream construction standards?

Mr. Barry-Hannon is keen to get in on that.

Very quickly. The construction industry is not only looking for supply but it is looking for localised supply. It is asking for that because that comes into their overall cost of transport but also the carbon and the climate, so they want to support local.

I am in Laois. If there was a hemp base built up by farmers sowing hemp, the by-products for all the building materials would be done in Laois - give or take. Is that what we are saying?

Yes, that is exactly it.

There is nothing wrong with that.

There is also the factor of environmental, social and governance, ESG. Corporate sustainability reporting, CSR, for companies is becoming a big thing. Companies need to have a CSR report. Hemp is really good for that. We are also facing significant financial exposure regarding the €8 billion to €20 billion by 2030 if the European targets are missed.

I have a few more questions but my time is running out. Everything is positive here. It is all good. Farmers would love it because they would be getting a guaranteed price and all that but the bottom line is when will we see this industry in this country? Can anyone answer that?

We will see it, as I said earlier, when there is Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine oversight of industrial hemp and when we finally align with Europe. The EU framework is already in place - it is a plug-in. We do not have to reinvent the wheel and start from scratch with policy. It is there in Europe. If we align with that, that is when you build your industrial pathways from there outwards.

I asked the witnesses when we will see this in this country. When will we actually see this? They are growing it. When do they think it will happen?

We are growing it at the moment. We are ready to go; the farmers are there. We are ready to get the decortication. All we are waiting for is support from the Department of agriculture, Enterprise Ireland and different bodies like that. Once we have that, we are ready. We already have hemp sown. We are just waiting for the decortication.

We have farmers ready to sow it. We have farmers ringing us on a fairly regular basis asking how we are fixed, what is happening and whether there is any sign of this. We have buyers lined up to buy it. The decortication is where it needs to get going. We need to get the support to get the decortication going. If the decorticator is put in place, it will fall into place then because everything else is ready to go.

When will the decorticator will be put in place?

This year.

The witnesses think it will be this year.

We expect we will be decorticating next year’s crop.

That is a great answer.

That is what we expect.

I thank everyone for being here. It is great to see so many here on this issue. A question I have heard asked many times over the past five or six years is: why do we not have hemp in this country? I am not one bit surprised; I am sorry. I am very cynical sometimes but I am not one bit surprised that the same conversation is going on for ten years because I have learned through my time in this place and before that that everything goes at a snail’s pace in this country. I am hearing the witnesses say it is good for the environment, good for the farmers and everything is good but nothing seems to move. We have had forestry owners and land owners at the committee talking about things like ash dieback and how they were let down around that. They do not want to replant their forests but they could plant this and there would be a more or less guaranteed pension fund. Ninety days sounds like something somebody made up. Everything sounds so good and the products are brilliant.

How much are we actually growing now? That is probably hard to answer because it is very small and the witnesses do not want to say.

Mr. O’Hara might answer.

There were about 150 farmers across Ireland when we did the research three years ago. Today there is probably about 80 or 90 because they cannot get their product to market. There is everything from five acres to 90 acres. There is one farmer in Youghal doing 400 acres and has a very profitable business. There is a good mixture and people are very interested in it but it is about getting the whole thing going.

As a science and innovation centre, we are ready. We are looking at different products, certification of it and what we need to do to bring it to certification. Each product we bring to certification is in the region of 200,000 to 250,000. That is the reality when you go through all the different aspects of each of the products, so there is a real practical element to that. We see the products as there; they are done. Our thing is how we can get it to market and we need certification to get it to market.

The witnesses have said this has been done in other European countries. It is another surprise to me. We are in the EU and we usually follow trends from the EU. Why are they doing it and we are not? Does it come down to Government policy?

It does come down to Government policy. We are an European Digital Innovation, EDI, centre for Europe. Last week I was in Brussels. We got the agriculture and the construction committees together. We talked about this and how we progress this. Each of them has different certification across Europe. We, as a European country, need to adapt European certification. There are several different cases that we are having problems with at the moment, with different modern method of construction, MMC, houses that we cannot bring in here. Each of those projects use EU certification but they will not stand up here. It is the policy element. We need an action group to make this work. Over the past three years, we have been talking to all the Departments, we are out in Brussels and we are looking at all the different aspects of it. We need a policy group to actually make this work and bring it into the industry. The industry is ready for it. IGM does 1,200 houses in Monaghan.

They are mad to look at. They have done a huge amount of research already with TU Dublin on insulation using hemp. We have 70 modern methods of construction companies, and the number is growing. Each of them is looking for low-carbon insulation, using something we grow ourselves. The problem we have with insulation is that if the price of oil goes up, the cost of insulation goes up. Everything is added on.

I have seen that.

Why cannot we grow our own insulation in 90 or 100 days to bring it into MMC? We need to do our own thing.

I am always saying that we are a small country, but we could be completely self-sustaining if we wanted to be. Whether energy, crops, or our own beef, we should not ever have to import from anywhere else if we do not want to. I cannot understand why feet are being dragged so much on this. It is ridiculous to hear this has been going on for ten years. I was not a Member of the Oireachtas ten years ago. The product hits climate targets and it suits the farmers.

It gives carbon credits to farmers as well.

It just seems to hit-----

They can register their farms on Pure Earth to see the carbon credits. The structures are in place, but we need to make them act.

Based on supply and demand and because the product is not produced in Ireland, I assume it is slightly more expensive than other products.

Importing something means it is going to be expensive. We have a product here and we are the exporter. For a whole market-----

In theory, if we got to 200,000 ha and it was being produced in this country, Future Cast would see that as being cheaper than importing.

Having Mr. Donoghue and his company looking at Ireland is an advantage. We need to support that. We have three industry companies here and we need to support them to develop.

Every articulated lorry load of product that comes into this country costs in the region of €4,000 to bring in from Europe. These companies are producing it locally, so that is €4,000 straight away-----

That is knocked off the price.

-----that is gone. Then there is the carbon and the whole environmental aspect.

It is also supporting indigenous Irish companies and producers.

That is the bottom line with it.

I will add one thing. With the uptake agreements that we want to do with Irish farmers for 15,000 metric tonnes of hemp a year, we would want an agreement of at least five years. That aligns with the request as regards the licensing.

I cannot understand it. The licensing falls under the Department of Health. Is that because of the link between hemp and cannabis? The Department knows that we live in a country where it rains nearly every single day. Cannabis growers only ever get caught because their electricity bills are so high as a result of using lamps to grow the plants inside. A few people in houses around mine got caught. That does not include me.

On the demand side again, we have Mr. Donoghue who has referred to how much he wants. Chloe Donovan of Natural Building Systems could not make it today but she provided a briefing note indicating how much she gets, where she gets it and where she will get it.

Ms Donovan is getting it from France, but she said she would take it off Irish farmers in a heartbeat. She orders 20 tonnes.

She told us that.

How does it stand up to the likes of mould? I have heard it is better than what is-----

I ask Mr. McDermott to come in.

Mould lives in an acidic environment with a pH of between 4 and 8 and because the lime is mixed in with the hemp, the pH value is up at 12 or 13 on acidity. It is really difficult for fungus or any kind of bacteria to grow on the hemp.

It is ideal for the likes of retrofitting older houses.

It is perfect for the Irish climate because we have the same humidity as the Amazon rainforest. We just do not have the heat. It is damp, and the idea is that it keeps the damp out. It makes much more sense to work with our climate rather than trying to keep out the moisture. If we use this as a fabric for our buildings, we will get long-term healthy buildings.

Lime is going to be a big issue for the quarry industry. We have a limestone flour. We polish tarmacadam stone every day in every quarry around Ireland. That is a waste product, in one sense, which could be used here as a circularity product.

That is another aspect.

We need lime from Ireland to make the binder for the hemp, and that is going to require between 10,000 and 12,000 metric tonnes of lime every year. That will support another industry.

That is fantastic.

I thank everyone who presented for us today. We read all of their statements and submissions, and there is a tremendous similarity among them. It is all very positive. I have some questions I want to put, particularly to Mr. O'Hara. He spoke about following the science, and that is clearly critically important. He also touched on the whole area of research and development. We have to follow the science and I want to hear a little bit about research and development or the lack of it, and how it is progressing. What is the trajectory for it in terms of the product? This is very important.

This crosses two areas, the agriculture sector and, of course, the construction sector. This is the agriculture committee but we have a joint committee on housing, which is clearly preoccupied with the construction sector. I have been to Finland and other places where I have seen other modern methods of construction, and the potential here is in MMC. To target Mr. O'Hara for a few minutes, I ask him to briefly talk about the potential in that area. We sort of know what it is but given what he is saying, we should follow the science. I ask him to talk a bit about research and development too.

Certification is clearly an issue and there are enormous challenges around it. The committee needs to understand those, which may take some time and we do not have time today. I ask those involved in this area to furnish the commission with some written additional information on the certification, because that seems to be a fairly tricky and challenging issue. I ask Mr. O'Hara to answer some of those questions briefly and to give us an in-depth understanding of certification, maybe in a little memorandum afterwards.

We opened a new geologic materials science lab, funded by Enterprise Island to the tune of €3.2 million, last Friday. We have some of state-of-the-art equipment to develop research and development in many of the aspects we have shown here. Key to what we do are R&D project and key to R&D projects is an SME company, an industry company. We have some of the top scientists in our outfit. Globally, we have 75 PhDs working with our organisation. The key thing is identifying the product, industry or company, and also putting that science together in our R&D projects.

The first project funded was a machine design project with Enterprise Ireland. It took a huge amount. It is the first project involving hemp that was ever funded. Enterprise Ireland is quite open to looking at a lot of other projects. We showed it the different products last Friday. There was a full table of the different types. They were also shown to the Minister, Deputy Peter Burke, and the Minister of State, Deputy Harkin, who were told what this could mean for the industry. Every one of them needs certification. Some have European certification already. We can adapt that and it will not take nearly as much time. It would probably take between six and nine months to get European certification. For any of our new products, it will probably take two or two and a half years. We have to look at how we can get that timescale down. The NSAI has a great team. We work with them all. However, it needs extra help. There are 70 companies coming in for agrément certification. Only five of those use modern methods of construction.

It is taking a huge amount of time. We got funding to look at a national fire testing centre. We are looking at the planning permission and bringing it forward. We need that in Ireland. We do not have a national fire testing centre. Every one of these products is going to need fire testing. We have a small one in Jordanstown in Belfast, but everything goes out to the BRE Group. When we talk about certification, we look at fire testing, sound and fuse sticks. I was talking to Mr. Donoghue earlier. My background is in the US. In some of these high-rise blocks, down around engineering rooms, there is a need for lightweight sound protection, and there is a huge export market in this area. It is about that, but every one of these products needs certification. We need the support to bring these products forward. As I said, for each of these products, we are talking about between €150,000 to €250,000 to get certification.

Mr. O'Hara accepts that certification is the biggest challenge facing this sector. It is not growing it, harvesting it or any of that. We clearly have people who can do all of that and who are willing and ready to do so. Would Mr. O’Hara say that this is the biggest challenge? It is not insurmountable, but it is a challenge.

It is a challenge.

Is it a very costly one?

It is a very costly thing for each company to do. We need to support the companies to do it. It has to come from each SME company having to undertake their certification.

There are other options for certification routes. At the moment, we are discussing what is conventional, which is a private company developing a product and taking on the investment and time costs itself. It could take two and a half to three years and cost €150,000 to €250,000 to get a product certified for building use. As the Senator said, that is key. It is not a barrier but it is key. You cannot get in unless you have that.

However, there are other ways to do this, particularly in the context of lower technological solutions, like the hemp line mixture, etc. This can be done nationally by creating a standard. Anybody who then manufactures to that standard would be certified. That is the way it is done with concrete blocks in Ireland. I could set up a concrete block company tomorrow. I do not need to do one fire test. I just need to have my blocks manufactured to that standard and it is certified. That is a way of opening it.

Another sort of in-between route is what has been done in France, where the chambres d'associations has effectively developed a code, and anybody who manufactures and installs within that code gets certified. It is almost like a private brand, a little bit like a Bord Bia-type of brand. The French Government recognises that brand and the building control authorities recognise it. That is what has been done in France. I could go to France tomorrow, start a hemp construction company and get certified by that organisation for what I am trying to do. I would not need to do any fire tests. It has all been pre-done. Those are two other routes.

I thank Mr. Daly very much. I just need to move on because I am conscious of my time to ask questions. The EPA carries a lot of clout about a lot of things. I would have thought this product was ticking a lot of boxes regarding things the EPA is concerned about in respect of carbon credits and a whole lot of other things. Is there any relationship or engagement with the EPA on any of these matters?

Not directly in my case. I will pass the question on to everyone else.

That is okay. I will move on. Turning to the Irish Green Building Council, IGBC, what is the involvement with that organisation?

In fairness, the Irish Green Building Council is very much behind this product. It is always pushing the product as well.

I will turn to Teagasc for a moment. It submitted a very interesting paper. It has a huge commitment in terms of farm diversification, so clearly it is behind this. We have heard about the challenges in the tillage sector. Its strategy goes from 2025 to 2030, I think. Teagasc is a valued and trusted organisation, with close links to the Department of agriculture and the Government. It has a strong remit and great credibility in this regard. What extra steps is it taking to push this on?

It has been a small part of my remit over the last number of years. I take a special interest in it because I like the crop. From the time we were growing it at Oak Park, I just really felt passionate about the crop in terms of what could be achieved through it. It was a bit frustrating in ways that there was no end market for it. We realised that it will grow very well and there are opportunities for it to replace other materials. Biocomposites and bioplastics can be produced from it. It ticks a lot of boxes from a sustainability perspective.

There is, however, that taboo associated with the crop. It is about trying to remove the taboo and create greater acceptance. One of the things I tried to do back in 2019, and again in 2025, was to run conferences in our food centre in Ashtown here in Dublin. It was about trying to remove that taboo and create a greater awareness within Government Departments. We invited people from Bord Bia, the Department of agriculture and various other bodies so they could hear from practitioners, such as the people in this room, and people who were trying to do things even on the food side. I know we are not dwelling on the food side here today and it is more about fibre insulation and those areas, but it is a multifunctional crop. The debate can sometimes get complex when we start talking about different areas and different things that can be produced from it, but there are low-hanging-fruit areas that can be focused on such as those we are talking about here today.

All I can do is to create that awareness of what can be achieved with this crop, create those industry links with Government Departments and have fact sheets on it. There is the potential to have it as part of research projects in the future if it is accepted, whether those projects are funded by the Department of agriculture or whoever else. Research projects can be generated around the crop, but there is a bit of a taboo around funding research in this area.

Dr. Kinnane wanted to come in on a point.

It is not just that there is a taboo about funding research projects in this area but that there is a lack of funding generally for research in Ireland. I call for greater research funding in the construction sector in particular. A new initiative, Construct Innovate, has been set up but the amount of funding is very small relative to that in other countries and to other sectors in this country. It is a multibillion-euro industry every year. We have a huge demand for housing, building infrastructure, etc. We need investment in facilities to enable testing of new materials and products coming to the market.

We do a lot of work with the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment for our own cement and changing the concrete standards. We are looking at doing that at the moment. We had a meeting similar to this one in-house in UCD on that subject and there was a claim that there was a total lack of funding of facilities to test new products. It is the major blockage in that industry. I hear the situation is exactly the same in this industry. There is a lack of funding of infrastructure and of research that can work alongside it.

In terms of the EPA, I wanted to mention that we had a couple of research projects co-funded by the EPA and the Irish Research Council, IRC. In general, in terms of plant science, there is an opportunity because research in genetics in respect of hemp is only about to get started. We in UCD are leading this research at the moment. I get invited to conferences in France, the UK, Germany and everywhere to talk about our research. This is also an opportunity for us to keep leading this type of research and to keep spearheading new breeding initiatives and new plant science-related initiatives involving hemp.

I thank all the witnesses for coming in. It is one of the more interesting topics that we have discussed here. It is one of those good news stories except for the fact that it is not a good news story because it is not possible to get it over the line.

Starting with Teagasc, there seems to be a bit of a contradiction in the opening statement. It was said that it was shown "the crop can be grown with little or no requirement for plant protection products", but also that "if grown more widely pests and disease could become a problem". I ask the witnesses to explain that. Is there a risk?

If you mass-produce a crop anywhere, you do run the risk of disease exposure. It is the same with any crop. If you are only growing a small amount of the crop, there is less risk of infection.

There is less of a risk of infection when growing a small amount of the crop. At the moment, we do not see any issues with disease around the crop, but as a greater area of the crop is produced, there is potential for disease to take hold within a country. There is that risk.

Is Mr. Caslin talking about sizes of 20 or 30 acres, or thousands of acres? What does he mean by a small amount?

It could be diseases like sclerotinia, which affects oilseed rape, or different types of diseases that could manifest themselves within a crop over time. They do not seem to be an issue at the moment, but they can become an issue if they manifest themselves within a crop over a period of time.

Have we seen that kind of thing happening in France, where most of this is produced?

Yes. There are issues with a certain number of diseases and crops out there. We cannot say that a crop is completely safe. There are always risks with crops around harvest time as well. If a farmer does not get favourable weather, there is the risk that he or she will not be able to harvest the crop in a timely manner. This crop is generally harvested in September and October. If the weather is not playing ball at that time of the year, it is a risk. Those risks exist with every crop, essentially.

My father-in-law undertook some forestry at home. He harvested it some 35 years later. I worked out the calculations based on the figure of €350 for an acre of hemp. If the prices stayed the same and did not increase over the 35 years, it works out at €12,250 per acre if everything goes okay, which is pretty good. The only difference with forestry and hemp is that people are paid every year for it, whereas the harvest is at the end of the 35 years. If there are storms and so forth, there is also less risk because one crop may be lost, rather than every crop. It is possibly an easier and simpler option for some people.

France is producing 60% of our hemp in the EU. When it comes to the products we are getting in, are we getting them from France or where is the main place we import products from? I presume they are products that are complete. How many acres did the witnesses say were produced in Ireland? How many acres are we growing here?

Mr. O’Hara touched on the number of acres we have. From a European context, some 60% came from France between 2015 and 2022. The production then increased by more than 80%. Mr. O’Hara might have the number of acres grown specifically in Ireland.

A total of 45,000 ha is growing at the moment in France.

The way the hemp in France is processed is by decortication through a co-operative because farmers cannot do it themselves. It has been looked at and funding is in place for another decorticator in the co-operative in order to supply three manufacturing facilities within France.

What is the additional price we are paying for importing these products, compared with using them in France to build houses? Obviously, there is an additional cost as we are importing them. We will use timber-like products as an example.

I import hemp blocks. They are the main thing we work with. The price has doubled, maybe even more than that. Since Covid, there has also been an uptick in transportation costs and everything. The cost is double and then some.

It is great that it is produced in 90 to 100 days. It only needs babysitting for that length of time, and there is not even that much babysitting with the crop.

How has Europe managed to do this but we have not? Obviously, there is a licensing block. Did Europe have issues before getting off the ground? Have we learned anything from the issues it had? Are there any lessons we can take from how Europe got over certain hurdles that we can apply to the hurdles we face, such as our licensing issue?

Mr. Donoghue mentioned that there is a corporation in France. Obviously, for us, the price is the incentive. Is there anything we need to look for from the Government in this regard, such as grants? What did other European countries get from their governments? Can we learn anything from how those countries got their licences?

We can learn that the rest of them have plugged straight into that European or CAP framework, which has a threshold of 0.3% tetrahydrocannabinol, THC. The threshold in Ireland is 0.2% THC. As I said earlier, that is not a loose regulation; it is a controlled agriculture regulation. If we have concerns around public safety enforcement or misuse, that framework is in place. It should be treated as a practical guide and allow us to continue to manage hemp from early on. Anything outside of industrial use cases should fall within the drugs framework. Currently, it is the mismatch between us and Europe that is creating that uncertainty for a legitimate and viable production sector in Ireland. I can pass to someone else if other witnesses wish to comment further.

I have done a state-of-play research on these co-operatives across Europe and the materials in question. Germany and France are two industrialised nations, particularly the Rhineland, where there is a tradition of industrialised crop utilisation. Construction is not the sole focus in this regard; it is a sort of spin-off. They are supplying silicates and cellulose. They are extracting elements from these materials. They have that tradition. They also have a waste stream. They researched what could be done with the low-quality materials and fibres, and they found the construction sector was suitable for those lower-grade materials. That is where this began to develop about 30 years ago. They also produce miscanthus in significant volumes and extract material from that crop on an industrial scale.

While we can learn from Germany and France, the Netherlands is closer to us in being slightly more of a pasture economy and less industrialised. The way it is kicking-starting this, which is probably what we need to do, is through the multistate market activation team, which Mr. O’Hara mentioned, to represent all the supply chain; unlock all the barriers effectively and at the same time; generate demand and supply; and smooth out of the bureaucratic and investment barriers farmers are coming across, etc. We could learn a lot from the Netherlands, as well as from France and Germany. The reason they are so successful is that they are 30 years ahead and they have a tradition of industrial use of crops that we have lost. Maybe the linen and flax industries would be our closest examples. They are selling into the car market and chemical sectors, etc. The construction sector is just one of those streams.

Has anyone looked into this product compared with timber? Is it the same value or price to produce, or are we looking at a dearer product? Can we see ourselves getting to the stage where, in order to meet our targets and so forth, we are going to say to the construction industry that 10% or 20% of its products need to be sustainable with a low-carbon footprint? Do the witnesses think we will get to that stage?

I might pass that question to Mr. O’Hara.

I refer to incentivising the sector to do it.

The construction industry is the highest producing carbon sector, standing at 46%.

We looked at the life cycle analysis of hemp and the life cycle analysis of timber. We looked at the carbon emissions per tonne aspect. Hemp has an interesting products base. The two materials are not just equal. There is a difference. We see nine products that we make from the hemp plant. The hemp harvester that we designed takes up the root as well. It takes off the top of the root. Nine products come out of the hemp plant. They are not equal. Timber is timber, but it depends on whether it is Douglas fir, larch or Sitka spruce. They are different things. We can bring this material into the construction industry and get nine products out of it. Nine products would be in the box. That is how we see it and that is the value that we recognise.

Approximately 20 minutes remain. I will allow three minutes per member in a second round. We will move in the same order.

I thank the Chair. It has been an interesting discussion. I have a couple of points to raise. Under the CAP, hemp is a product or a crop. What payments are given in other European countries to farmers growing hemp? What level of subsidy do they receive, if any? How does that work? Has anyone done any research in that regard?

I might pass that question to Mr. Daly.

To be honest, I do not know. We did have subsidies for things such as miscanthus and they were pulled. I do not know. Some individual nations are involved, if not on a European level. The Netherlands is supporting it through this activation team. There is also a financial activation and it includes support for starting to grow. I do not know the figure.

I am sure there is the potential to within every country.

The supports are pretty much the same across Europe. Until recently, we were included in that. We get our basic income support for sustainability, BISS, payments and our area aid. That is pretty much across Europe-----

There is no specific payment for growing hemp as opposed to-----

There is not anymore. The support is in the construction industry other than the normal payment. It is treated as a normal crop as far as the farming side of things is concerned.

We have recently developed supports for the tillage sector. It may dovetail into those supports at a later date.

Mr. Donoghue mentioned a co-operative approach in France whereby farmers come together. How does that model work? How does it fit into the private business model that the witnesses have? I will also come to the issue of certification that Senator Boyhan mentioned earlier. We have the Irish Agrément Board. For all these end products, certification is needed for their use in buildings. The big issue we have is that architects are not going to recommend something for use in a building unless it has certification. That is a big issue that we need to sort out.

The co-operative model is that funds grow from the co-operative and the co-operative then buys the hemp. It processes the hemp. A factory in France produces the blocks that we use. It gets its hurd directly from the co-operative. It cannot buy directly from a farmer. The farmers are not involved in that particular part. I am not saying that is the best model but that is the way it works in France.

The farmers are shareholders in the co-operative.

Yes. For the machines they are using, as Mr. Morgan pointed out, if they are doing fibre and hurd at the same time, it is very expensive. Doing a small-scale thing and getting something going here is enough. Mr. Daly spoke about the low-hanging fruit in the context of construction materials and so on. That is the way to go.

The other point about certification is that we have spent the past six years or so doing certification. As Mr. O'Hara pointed out, it is very expensive. It is absolutely necessary. We got a three-hour fire rating for hemp. It is non-combustible. That cost a lot of money. We are just going through this in the United States.

I am not sure of standards here, but I assume they are harmonised with the European standards. Because there are already examples of products that have European standards, there are things such as equivalences that can be considered. We are looking at putting in for the agreement here to get some of the products that we want to get into the market prior to manufacturing. We want to be able to use those certifications. There are 40 certifications that we have with these products. I do not see it as an arduous process. It has to be done and paid for. Then again, if that cannot be done as a business, nobody is going to buy it.

I will go back to where I was in respect of licensing. I still think licensing is the issue. Mr. Caslin mentioned a taboo. We are going nowhere without the Department of agriculture. That is where the taboo starts. No public servant in the Department is going to grasp a nettle that is still on the list of controlled substances and is licensed under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1997 - end of story. We can talk about different varieties, but it is a member of the cannabis family. It has a THC content. It is where it is. We must get it out of there and over to agriculture. The Department of agriculture is not going to grasp it until it is in control of it. With the greatest of respect to public servants, no public servant is going to embrace a product that is dealt with under the Misuse of Drugs Act.

The witnesses have the Bill I drafted. I want them to come back to me on it. I admit that I am a beef farmer. I started out with it for the licensing of the protein. The witnesses are not going that far. They are of a different variety, but it is still industrial hemp. No matter the variety, it will have to come under the one licence. If we were talking about potatoes today, whether we were going to chip them, boil them, bake them or mash them, and whether they were Kerr's pink, golden wonder or records, there would still only be the one umbrella and they would still be potatoes. That is the problem we have here. It is not just because I have the work done, but I genuinely think that the first block, square one, is getting licensing into the Department of agriculture. I want the witnesses to help me on that. The draft Bill is there. I gave it to the witnesses. I know it is not the finished product. I know I was coming at the issue from a different angle. I was coming at it solely for the seed as a form of protein for feed. That is another option. If we get this business up and running, that is another option. The Bill includes five years, as the witnesses have mentioned. It includes transportation if someone is a grower and everything else. It needs tweaking, but we will get it up and running. That is the first step. I give the witnesses my word that I will bring it to the next level. However, I want them to come back to me because I want to get the legislation right when it goes in. I hope that when it goes in, the Department of agriculture will embrace it. We will know then if not. If the Department starts trying to give me a hard time and is not embracing it, we will know that we have a problem and need to go at it from another angle. I ask the witnesses to come back to me. I ask them to circulate the Bill among them. Producers, processors, academics and everybody who is anybody when it comes to this great story we have heard are here today. We have to get things moving and that is the place to start. I want the witnesses to circulate the Bill among them, cut it to shreds, copy and paste it, tear it up or come back and tell me that it is going in the wrong direction. I do not mind. If there is something with which they can come back, I ask them to do so and we will take it from there.

We absolutely will. In the past, I worked on and implemented the five D policy model that the Government had advised for designing a policy. The first D related to demand. We have seen in the room today that the demand is there. The Senator is describing the problem whereby the public servants will not go near it. That comes under the heading of "deepening". We have to deepen understanding and create the distinction between industrial hemp and illicit drugs.

The next step is the design. It is then up to the Civil Service to design this and consider what type of licensing it wants to come in. That is where we would integrate the Senator's Bill. The next D is around deciding. We must decide what way to implement. The final D relates to delivering. We will work closely with the Senator on that Bill and will use that model to have a good implementation timeline.

I thank all the witnesses for coming. I had a chat with Mr. Morgan and he educated me on this issue. I stand to learn more about it as we go along. I will work with Senator Daly and anyone else on the committee. Senator Daly has taken the bull by the horns, so to speak. We will try to push this on. It is extremely important and the story is really good. However, the Senator is absolutely right that responsibility must be moved from the Department of Health to the Department of agriculture. That is the rate limiting step at this time.

That is what we need to get moving on. I thank all the witnesses. I asked Mr. Morgan to bring an array of experts. He has brought a stellar cast and there has been a very impressive turnout. I thank the witnesses again for coming here. I appreciate it.

As was said, we need to get this shifted from there. Whatever we can do for the witnesses we will do. This is a good news story.

In other countries, how long have they been using blocks for building houses or whatever?

The blocks have been the aftermath of the initial mixing and casting in situ. The blocks themselves have a lifespan of a couple of hundred years, which is an unbelievable length of time. The factory we work in is called IsoHemp and it has been in production for ten to 12 years. Its current factory can produce about 8,000 blocks a day.

Mr. Donoghue said you do not need mortar. Is it just the case that the blocks are made in such a way that they stack or-----

Yes. Mr. Donoghue's blocks click together. They almost push together like wood flooring.

Tongue and groove.

Yes, that is what I was thinking. I was going to say like Lego, but they slot together.

There are other little blocks on the market that have very thin joints and that also involves lime. A way of looking at it is that you can build a house out of two ingredients: hemp and lime. You might have a little bit of lime along the joints for air tightness - it depends on the design - and then the plaster that goes on top of the blocks is also lime. That promotes natural paints. As we said, the blocks mitigate negative things like mould, dampness and all the problems that modern buildings have in abundance.

What kind of weight is in each block? Are they a similar size to our-----

We have ones measuring 600 mm by 300 mm by 300 mm. There are about 5.5 of them per square metre. There are different sizes of the solid blocks Mr. McDermott is talking about as well. There are different applications. Those types of blocks are best for the renovation stuff but also for new places, whereas the dry stacked, interlocking blocks are more for newer houses, new constructions and things like that.

They are simple to work with and fast.

That is right. We provide training, for example, in Australia as part of that certification. They have to do the training with us, even though it is easy. We have a huge list of people who want to do training. We are doing training in the US shortly for another building. Those sorts of things are creating employment opportunities and developing industries.

What kind of building work is going on in Ireland with hemp blocks?

We have conservation and bringing old buildings back to life with hemp, which is excellent for allowing the fabric to breathe. All these old stone buildings are being done up around the country. There is no damp proof course, DPC, so there is nothing to stop the moisture coming up from the ground. As hemp is hydroscopic, the blocks are being used to retrofit the inside and the outside of these buildings. Again, there is the lifespan of the product and there is the lifespan of a stone building or an old heritage building. We have been retrofitting old 1980s bungalows and brick houses. Then, because of the lightweight nature of the hempcrete, the design flexibility is off the charts, so you can really create incredible structures. A hemp house is about 80% lighter than a concrete block house so it gives you a chance to reduce your use of concrete in the foundations. It also gives you huge design flexibility with a lightweight structure, whether newbuild, retrofit or conservation, or even a music studio.

Perfect.

May I say something?

One second. I want to get Dr. Melzer in briefly. We have asked the questions that we want to get asked on this. I will do one quick round if anyone feels there are particular points they would like to raise before the meeting concludes. We will do one minute-----

Chair, may I say one thing before you do the round? Next week we will meet on this again and we will have the Department before us, so when today's witnesses are doing the next round, maybe there is a message they want to give to us for the officials from the Department.

I call Dr. Melzer first. We will do one minute per member then to round off.

To provide a little historical perspective, there was a professor at UCD about 100 years ago, George Sigerson, who was also a big supporter of the GAA. Back then he wrote a book, Cannabiculture in Ireland, so he was already seeing that industrial hemp was an opportunity for Ireland to grow an industrial crop and to support the local economy. This is not really a new idea; it has been around for a long time. It is our opportunity to grasp it now.

We will start with the back and go around anticlockwise and then the front row anticlockwise.

I will keep this quick. As Senator Daly said, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine will be in here next week. My ask, and indeed for the wider group for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, would be to have a Department-led industrial hemp fibre pathway. As we mentioned, it is a matter of taking the specific strains out of the HPRA's hands and allowing the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine oversight. I am not suggesting throwing the HPRA's and the Department of justice's books out the window. They should still be retained for appropriate roles in a controlled drugs policy and enforcement setting.

There is a lot happening this year with the European Presidency and there will be the Global Bioeconomy Summit in October as well. It is an opportunity for us to align with Europe, using that 0.3% THC framework. As I said earlier, it is a plug-in. We can adapt with that and, if there are any concerns, as I said, around public safety or misuse, refer back to that framework and work with our European counterparts to make sure we have a model that works and aligns with the rest of Europe.

Just to clear up something from earlier, the hemp we are growing has a 90-day to 100-day cycle. We have a frost-resistant variety at the moment that we are sowing. That will grow. We hope to get that in most years by mid-April the way we will harvest it before 1 August. Harvesting before 1 August takes most of the risk out of the weather because you still have the long days for the drying. It is just to make sure we have that. We will not let it go anywhere near seed or flower. This is like oats when it is green, before the heads shoot out of it. That is what we intend to do.

An activation group with the members who are here and the four Departments, that is, the Department of Health, the Department of justice, the Department of agriculture and the Department of housing is what we need to get. The expertise that is here in the Department of housing, UCD, TUS and the SMEs is the key point.

I agree with that. Collaboration is vital here and I would be happy to help out.

On that, despite the blocks that are before us with hemp, there are a lot of people here who still continue to work with it, despite the barriers. That tells you something.

We talk about value chain development. The value chain is pretty much here in the room from the farmer all the way to the researchers, the people who want to manufacture it and the end user. They are all here in the room. That is proof of what you are looking for as well.

From working with hemp over the past ten years and meeting designers and architects, and seeing their faces light up when they hear about this product and when they hear that there is somebody actually doing it, the biggest barrier we have is price point. The architects are doing their best. The designers are trying to convince customers that this is what they need to go forward with. Oftentimes the only reason they pull back from this is the cost, so if we have a homegrown supply chain, we really feel like this will grow exponentially and really quickly. The Irish customer will then get something of such high quality. That is what we would love to see - that end customer getting something long-lasting. That would be really good.

It has been great being here today and being part of the group. We look forward to all this getting cleared up. We are ready to go. We are ready to put up our money, buy off the farmers and that sort of thing. We are ready to learn. It is not just about us. It is about working with everybody. It is a whole collaborative thing. What do they say? How many people does it take to make a village? The time is now. There is enough evidence out there to show that this is a goer. We know from our global experience that it is consumer demand that is driving our market. People want it slow, and doing the regulations and stuff, but people still want it. That is something we are very excited about.

I thank the committee.

I will reinforce what Mr. O'Hara said about a market or sector development activation team or group that draws across all the Departments and some of the key agencies, such as the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, Enterprise Ireland, etc. This touches on a whole range of areas.

I repeat that, as a building material, hemp is low carbon and breathable. It is an insulating product with a thermal mass or thermal storage quality. It is unique and highly appropriate for the Irish environment. There is certainly a market there.

It is not a crop that we should be afraid of. We should embrace the crop. We should look at more research around the crop, too. We could possibly look at a strategy around the crop, as the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs did in the UK. It developed a number of years ago a strategy for hemp and its potential in the UK. Perhaps that could be considered for this country.

There are some roadblocks. I like the work that Senator Daly is doing in developing the Bill. That is something we should all be looking at. There is also the multi-annual licence. If, say, Mr. Donoghue has a proposal for a five-year contract, he should not have to be going for a licence every year and reapplying year on year. He should be a part of that project. A five-year licence would make a lot of sense in that situation. There are these kinds of roadblocks. You can get an annual licence today. There is not that much restriction on getting a licence to grow hemp, but some people find it a bit of an ordeal. Perhaps it would be better if the industry had a multi-annual licence. We must identify roadblocks. Perhaps developing a strategy could open up this whole area. We could see where the roadblocks were and identify ways of getting over them.

Gabhaim buíochas leis na finnéithe go léir as an bplé cuimsitheach. Is ábhar é seo a mbeimid ag filleadh air arís leis an Roinn talmhaíochta an tseachtain seo chugainn

I thank the witnesses for contributing. It has been an insightful discussion. It is a topic to which we will return, particularly with the Department next week.